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Hyundai shocks Korea with mid-engined Veloster concept

There are many things we love here at Autoblog, but one of the quirkiest is the mid-engined hot hatch, whether it's the Renaultsport Clio V6 or the Volkswagen GTI W12-650 concept. Unfortunately, we can never seem to get our hands on one - the former never having made the transatlantic journey and the latter remained strictly a concept. And now we've got one more to salivate over.
It's called, simply enough, the Veloster Midship concept, and Hyundai is unveiling it this week at the Busan Motor Show in South Korea. As you might have guessed, it's essentially a Veloster with the engine - a 2.0-liter Theta turbo four producing 296 horsepower - mounted behind the two seats. It's also got a lightweight aluminum suspension, a reinforced chassis and extreme aero to help that mid-mounted turbo engine do its thing.
The project was undertaken by the same team that developed the initial i20 WRC rally car, but unfortunately as Hyundai itself says in the press release below (released with the solitary image above), "The Midship is a concept only to explore possibilities for the Veloster chassis and is currently not related to any future production model." Which is a bit of a shame, but hardly a surprise.

How Hyundai lost momentum, and will 'take a few years' to recover

SEOUL/DETROIT/CHONGQING, China — At a near-empty Hyundai Motor showroom in the Chinese mega city of Chongqing, the store manager is grumbling about his shortage of customers and a lack of bigger, cheaper SUV models popular in the world's largest auto market. Even with discounting of as much as 25 percent, his dealership was selling barely a hundred vehicles a month, said the manager surnamed Li. A nearby Nissan dealership was selling about 400 vehicles a month, a store manager there said. "The sales are simply poor," Li told Reuters. "Look at the Nissan store next door, they have tens of customers while we just have two." An hour's drive away is Hyundai's massive $1 billion manufacturing plant, which opened last year with a target to produce 300,000 vehicles per year. But with sales weak and the Chinese auto market slowing sharply, the factory is running at roughly 30 percent of capacity, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The sources asked not to be identified because the information was not public. Hyundai, the world's fifth largest automaker, declined to comment on the Chongqing plant's production or the showroom's sales but said it is "closely cooperating" with local partner BAIC to turn around the China business. BAIC did not respond to requests for comment. Hyundai's woes mark a major reversal for the automaker which was an early success story in China as it quickly and cheaply rolled out popular new models into a surging market. In 2009, Hyundai and partner Kia's combined sales ranked third in China after General Motors and Volkswagen. The South Korean duo now ranks ninth, and its market share in China was 4 percent last year, from more than10 percent at the beginning of this decade. Executives and industry experts say Hyundai conceded its once stronghold in the low-end segment to fast-growing Chinese rivals such as Geely and BYD. Foreign rivals not only defended their turf in premium segments but also kept pricing competitive for mass-market models, squeezing Hyundai's positioning as an affordable foreign brand, they said. In the United States, the world's second-biggest auto market, Hyundai's market share fell to 4 percent last year, near a decade low. Hyundai ran into problems in China and the United States for similar reasons: It missed shifts in consumer tastes, especially the surge in demand for SUVs, and it sought higher prices than its brand image could command, four Chinese dealers and half a dozen former and current U.S.

Hyundai Group design chief wants more differentiation between models and brands

Luc Donckerwolke, the man who oversees design at Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis, is determined to get more differentiation into the model range. He not only wants greater visual separation between all the models in the range, he also wants more distinction between Hyundai Group cars and others in the respective segments, and global distinctions so that a Hyundai in China doesn't necessarily look like one built for North America. He told Autocar, "We will not have a global design language because otherwise it's too rigid. [The alternative is] more work, but it's more flexible." Donckerwolke gets an extreme look at the results of homogeneous design, because an enormous number of cars on the road in South Korea are Hyundai Group products. "[Our] core task is to differentiate the design philosophy of the three brands, not least because we have a big [around 70%] share in Korea. We need to differentiate each model, otherwise the landscape is too homogeneous." Top-down, each brand gets a design brief. Hyundai will be Hyundai's "sexy, seductive and sensuous, sporty, eager and stylish," holding onto its value proposition while adding emotion. Kia will be "young, challenging and cool — cooler than before," said brand design chief Byungchul Juh, with Donckerwolke adding that it's about "streetwear — bold, fresh and young." And Genesis is "haute couture." Donckerwolke characterizes the design philosophy as not "Russian dolls but ... chess pieces, with a look that reveals its own charismatic character. For example, Kia's used to be about the tiger nose grille, separate headlights and the lower intake. Now it's going to be more of a mask that will deliver sportiness and a presence." Kia designer Juh said, "There will be a distinct version of tiger face for each segment, and we'll keep the tiger nose grille. In principle it's the same, but there's a different interpretation for each segment, and more of a 3D feeling. We're moving from a nose to a face." The sketches we've seen of Kia's coming small global crossover take a first step, and we're told the next Sportage will make more impact than the new Tucson. As for Hyundai, the next Sonata will "be the design flag-bearer." We wait to see how much of the vehicle all of this affects. But right now, look at the 2020 Elantra and Sonata from the front three-quarter; ignore their front fascias, and they're two sizes of one sausage.